The Pope on co-ops

In a speech last Saturday, Pope Francis praised co-operative organizations, saying that “the foundation of new cooperative enterprises, along with the further development of those already in existence” should be a “first place” priority of society. Co-operatives, he said, should “continue to be the motor for lifting up and developing the weakest part of our local communities and of civil society”. In co-operatives, he said, “capital does not rule over people, but people over capital.”

He called for “creative imagination to find forms, methods, attitudes and tools to combat the throwaway culture cultivated by the powers that support the economic and financial policies of the globalised world.”